EdTech futures: time, value and the promise of digital disruption in higher education

The growth of the Education Technology (EdTech) sector in recent years has been accompanied by predictions that new digital platforms will disrupt HE. However, there remains a disjuncture between promises of digital disruption and the absence of empirical evidence of disruption. This article juxtaposes two theses on the value of education to offer a theoretical explanation for why this imagined digital disruption may be difficult to achieve. The first thesis is sociological and is primarily informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This sociological account is compared with the example of the investment thesis of Emerge Education. When read together, these two theses provide intertwining, yet contradictory, accounts of the value of education and how that value is (re-)constructed. New digital platforms that aim to disrupt established institutional forms of Higher Education (HE) give emphasis to increasing employability and reducing the considerable investments of time in education required to accrue cultural and social value. We argue that an EdTech focus on reducing the time of education, by creating new educational assets that can be accessed more flexibly and efficiently, has not yet challenged a primary value of HE for students and institutions that benefit most from current arrangements.